Outcry Witness by Aime Austin

Author:Aime Austin [Austin, Aime]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781644140734
Publisher: Moore Digital Media

Thirteen

Nicole

December 23, 1991

Before I could protest, my daddy bundled me into his Cadillac and was roaring off the property when I hadn’t even clicked my seat belt. The first ten minutes of the ride were dead quiet, the only sound the faint whomp of the tires on pavement. It was the first time I regretted that the car was nearly soundproof. A little wind noise would have been welcome.

I spoke before my dad did. The last thing I wanted to talk about was Seth Collins. The second to last Aubrey Theriot. But I wanted answers more than I wanted comfort.

“Bree?” I whispered my question. There were so many others, none appropriate. I knew how the birds and the bees worked. When I was about fifteen, I’d walked in on Daddy and…Mam. There wasn’t enough mind bleach to get that memory out, but I’d made peace with the fact that they’d had sex at least three times. Now I was dialing back that number and a new mental image was taking its place.

“Your mother…Margaret and I were going through a tough time. Aubrey…she’s a good listener. One thing led to another…”

“I know where babies come from, Daddy.” I had to swallow the feeling of rejection before I could get the words past my lips. “Why didn’t Bree keep me?”

The question would have been better put to Aubrey herself, but she wasn’t here to answer for her crimes. My father was.

“By that time, your mother’d had a few miscarriages. Michelle was more of a miracle than we’d ever realized.” I bit my lip. My bitch of a half-sister was not the definition of a miracle. “The doctors said your mother wouldn’t be able to carry another baby to term. Secondary infertility was what they called it. Margaret was devastated. Aubrey has lived at the estate her whole life. Her mother lived there and her mother before.”

Without the historical context of successive generations of women working for a single-family sometimes going back to before the Confederacy, none of this would make any sense. I would have been hard-pressed to explain any of it to most of the girls I went to college with. In fact, I never did.

“What did you say that would have made her give me to Mam?” That last stuck in my throat like thick peanut butter. I had to swallow hard just to breathe.

“I’m…I’m not proud of this.”

“What? What aren’t you proud of?” My mind spun out very far. My father lived life balls to the wall. It was the Texan in him. He lived big and unapologetically. Regret wasn’t a word in his vocabulary.

“Aubrey was young, and her mom was sick.”

“Please tell me you didn’t pay her for a baby. Slavery ended over a hundred years ago.”

“We did not pay her. Your mother laid out a very convincing case for having us raise you and not a single mother living on a housekeeper’s salary.”

“What was the lynchpin?” There had to be something compelling enough to separate a mother from a child.

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